People, it seems, have never been so afraid of their food - and, say some experts, an obsession with healthy eating may paradoxically be endangering lives.
Twenty-nine-year-old Frenchwoman Sabrina Debusquat recounts how, over 18 months, she became a vegetarian, then a vegan - eschewing eggs, dairy products and even honey - before becoming a "raw foodist" who avoided all cooked foods, and ultimately decided to eat just fruit.

It was only when her deeply worried boyfriend found clumps of her hair in the bathroom sink and confronted her with the evidence that she realised that she was on a downward path.

"I thought I held the truth to food and health, which would allow me to live as long as possible," said Debusquat.

"I wanted to get to some kind of pure state. In the end my body overruled my mind."

For some specialists, the problem is a modern eating disorder called orthorexia nervosa.

Someone suffering from orthorexia is "imprisoned by a range of rules which they impose on themselves," said Patrick Denoux, a professor in intercultural psychology at the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaures.

These very strict self-enforced laws isolate the individual from social food gatherings and in extreme cases, can also endanger health.

Orthorexia nervosa seems to be a logical consequence of trying to find satisfactory reasons for eating solely within the worldly, secular domain of reasons for eating and living.

One doesn't simply eat to stay alive; one eats for the purpose of living a particular lifestyle or to fulfill a particular life purpose. But in modern secular culture, this doesn't seem to be emphasized, except in terms of the elites and others wealthy enough who are trying to make a statement with their food choices.

I once heard a story about an Indian chief who had stopped eating, sometime from the time when the whites displaced the Indians. The Indians were displaced from their original territory and put into a reservation. There, even though they had food, they stopped eating. The psychologist telling the story said that the Indians saw no point in eating, now that they were displaced from their way of life and had nothing to live for, or at least couldn't live the way they used to anymore. The implication is that the Indians, as a culture, didn't think of eating as something one does simply out of hunger or to stay alive, but they ate for the purpose of living their way of life; their reason for living was crucial for their eating.

Another form of addiction or compulsive behaviour. There appears to be no limit to them, providing the initial indulgence or choice involves some type of pleasure. I found the work of the English sociologist Anthony Giddens interesting in this respect:

Why is compulsive behaviour so common in modern society? It seems to be linked to lifestyle choice. We are freer now than 40 years ago to decide how to live our lives. Greater autonomy means the chance of more freedom. The other side of that freedom, however, is the risk of addiction. The rise of eating disorders coincided with the advent of supermarket development in the 1960s. Food became available without regard to season and in great variety, even to those with few resources.

I think Sabrina should have stopped at veganism, then she would've been fine, and doing the world a favor.

I agree with this. The vegetarian and vegan diets can be healthy as long as they are well-balanced; no need to go beyond that to such an extreme as Sabrina did.

Technically, eating nothing but potato chips and sugar candies is a vegan diet, but will make you very unhealthy, which is why we sometimes see even vegans getting very sick.

Dick Gregory (civil rights activist, health food advocate) recently passed away at the age of 84. Although not too old or not too young, he advocated a raw food diet.

Beginning in the mid-1980s, Gregory was a figure in the health food industry by advocating for a raw fruit and vegetable diet. He wrote the introduction to Viktoras Kulvinskas' book Survival into the 21st Century. Gregory first became a vegetarian in the 1960s and lost a considerable amount of weight by going on extreme fasts, some lasting upwards of 50 days. He developed a diet drink called "Bahamian Diet Nutritional Drink" and went on TV shows advocating his diet and to help the morbidly obese.[34]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Gregory

“And how does the disciple of the noble ones know moderation in eating? There is the case where the disciple of the noble ones, considering it appropriately, takes his food not playfully, nor for intoxication, nor for putting on bulk, nor for beautification, but simply for the survival & continuance of this body, for ending its afflictions, for the support of the holy life, thinking, ‘I will destroy old feelings (of hunger) & not create new feelings (from overeating). Thus I will maintain myself, be blameless, & live in comfort.’ This is how the disciple of the noble ones knows moderation in eating.

“And how does the disciple of the noble ones know moderation in eating? There is the case where the disciple of the noble ones, considering it appropriately, takes his food not playfully, nor for intoxication, nor for putting on bulk, nor for beautification, but simply for the survival & continuance of this body, for ending its afflictions, for the support of the holy life, thinking, ‘I will destroy old feelings (of hunger) & not create new feelings (from overeating). Thus I will maintain myself, be blameless, & live in comfort.’ This is how the disciple of the noble ones knows moderation in eating.

Excellent point. I suspect that many people might take "survival and continuance of this body" to mean some kind of super-optimal state where the body never gets ill and has boundless energy, as well as looking good all the time.

"Then again, the monk is content with any old robe cloth at all, any old alms food, any old lodging, any old medicinal requisites for curing sickness at all. And the fact that he is content with any old robe cloth at all, any old alms food, any old lodging, any old medicinal requisites for curing sickness at all, is a quality creating a protector.

Twenty-nine-year-old Frenchwoman Sabrina Debusquat recounts how, over 18 months, she became a vegetarian, then a vegan - eschewing eggs, dairy products and even honey - before becoming a "raw foodist" who avoided all cooked foods, and ultimately decided to eat just fruit.

Not long ago I had no idea "vegans" and "raw foodist" exist. I only knew about vegetarians. But thanks to the ultra-spiritual guy I was not caught by surprise when reading this topic.

52. "Sariputta, there are certain recluses and brahmans whose doctrine and view is this: 'Purification comes about through food.' They say: 'Let us live on kola-fruits,' and they eat kola-fruits, they eat kola-fruit powder, they drink kola-fruit water, and they make many kinds of kola-fruit concoctions. Now I recall having eaten a single kola-fruit a day. Sariputta, you may think that the kola-fruit was bigger at that time, yet you should not regard it so: the kola-fruit was then at most the same size as now. Through feeding on a single kola-fruit a day, my body reached a state of extreme emaciation. Because of eating so little my limbs became like the jointed segments of vine stems or bamboo stems. Because of eating so little my backside became like a camel's hoof. Because of eating so little the projections on my spine stood forth like corded beads. Because of eating so little my ribs jutted out as gaunt as the crazy rafters of an old roofless barn. Because of eating so little the gleam of my eyes sank far down in their sockets, looking like a gleam of water which has sunk far down in a deep well. Because of eating so little my scalp shriveled and withered as a green bitter gourd shrivels and withers in the wind and sun. Because of eating so little my belly skin adhered to my backbone; thus if I touched my belly skin I encountered my backbone, and if I touched my backbone I encountered my belly skin. Because of eating so little, if I tried to ease my body by rubbing my limbs with my hands, the hair, rotted at its roots, fell from my body as I rubbed.

MN 12

A wise man once asked an audience, "why do the ignorant shrug their shoulders?"

No one in the audience knew. They shrugged their shoulders, however the wise man only laughed and shook his head. He didn't explain any further.

“And how does the disciple of the noble ones know moderation in eating? There is the case where the disciple of the noble ones, considering it appropriately, takes his food not playfully, nor for intoxication, nor for putting on bulk, nor for beautification, but simply for the survival & continuance of this body, for ending its afflictions, for the support of the holy life, thinking, ‘I will destroy old feelings (of hunger) & not create new feelings (from overeating). Thus I will maintain myself, be blameless, & live in comfort.’ This is how the disciple of the noble ones knows moderation in eating.

Excellent point. I suspect that many people might take "survival and continuance of this body" to mean some kind of super-optimal state where the body never gets ill and has boundless energy, as well as looking good all the time.

Taking monks as an example, shouldn't laymen be thinking, not of creating a diet of superfoods, but just of preparing decent, average meals similar to what monks might get on an alms round? This may stop them from thinking they are spiritually superior, and from spending useless amounts of time & energy trying to create "better than average" bodies - a futile and frustrating pursuit.They will be rotting corpses soon enough, just like the rest of us.

Eating disorders are difficult because you have to entirely want to be free of them in order to recover.

It is an addiction of the mind... Chasing phantoms...

"A virtuous monk, Kotthita my friend, should attend in an appropriate way to the five clinging-aggregates as inconstant, stressful, a disease, a cancer, an arrow, painful, an affliction, alien, a dissolution, an emptiness, not-self."